Overall: GOOD
Jeremy Saulnier's second film Blue Ruin is a mostly crowdfunded noir effort with childhood friend Macon Blair in the all-consuming lead. You cannot discuss the movie without discussing Blair who is rarely ever off-screen, delivering a relatable and occasionally amusing performance amongst a generous amount of downtrodden chaos. The film has obvious odes to some of the Cohen brothers schtick, (ordinary, everyday guy caught up in some not-at-all-ordinary turmoil), but the comedy angle is quite subdued. There is plenty of brutality though, with ever-mounting tension due in part to how sloppy things continue to pan-out. Saulnier wrote, directed, and shot this film and it looks dirty and grounded, but not in a pandering to the gritty-trend way. The approach is quite fitting for the material, material that is plenty horrific and nasty without venturing into conventional genre terrain.
Polarizing stand-up turned filmmaker Bobcat Goldthwait's first venture into horror is the thoroughly lackluster Willow Creek. There is a careful line to be walked when creating a slow-boil type atmosphere and in this regard, Goldthwait takes WAY too long to get there. About three/fourths of the movie's running time is spent with a couple sight-seeing, interviewing locals, awkwardly filming their own amateur documentary, and getting in adorable couple arguments. All of this is fine to a point, but even at a mere seventy-nine minutes in length, the disappointing pay-off makes it appear likely that there simply was not much of a compelling idea here to work with in the first place. So why does the last act not work once we finally get there? Well, that is because it is an almost carbon copy of The Blair Witch Project. Just with Big Foot. So if you have seen the most famous found footage horror movie of all time, then you have also seen this far more boring and less successful version. All that said, there is a pretty good, twenty-minute single-shot take that makes this not a complete trainwreck. If only this was a short film then.
Dir - Jonathan Glazer
Overall: MEH
There is a difference between bizarre and astronomically confusing. Jonathan Glazer's adaptation of Michael Faber's Under the Skin assuredly falls into the latter category. While it is virtually impossible to make heads or tails of anything going on in the first half, any assumptions that it would all fall into place at some point later on becomes frustratingly realized. This is unfortunate since Glazer's steadfast stubbornness not to spoon-feed his audience could wield fascinating results with such compelling production values at play. Visually, the film is quite excellent and not just because of Scarlet Johansson's much talked about nudity. The experimental soundtrack by English singer/songwriter Micachu is perfectly unearthly, yet this still cannot completely forgive the, well, unforgiving narrative. Along with the constant tole this film takes on the brain, it is further bogged down by being ultimately pretty dull and boring, waving its arms in pretentiousness without finding anywhere substantial to really go.
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